2020... what a year.
I just put the finishing touches on my Annual Review.
Here are 30 lessons I learned about myself and the world across five areas:
• Health
• Wealth
• Relationships
• Online creativity
• Personal operations
🧵👇🏼
1. Health starts with removal, not addition.
This year I officially hit 100 lbs lost. And looking back, it wasn't what I started doing, but what I stopped doing that got me there.
Fewer carbs, fewer beers, fewer hours sitting, these things add up.
The most "disciplined" people actually are the most undisciplined.
But they recognize and accept this.
So they set up constraints that prevent them from having to rely on self-control and willpower.
If you can't sit comfortably alone with the voice in your head, no amount of "success" will change that.
12 weeks alone in NYC during peak-COVID forced me to learn this lesson.
The times I felt best: eating healthily and reading philosophy.
The times I felt worst: eating horribly and doom scrolling.
This is the closest thing you can get to primal living in the modern world.
Start the day with a walk and watch your energy, mood, and creativity soar.
These will be different for everyone.
But start looking for the fundamentals of what makes you feel good.
Then find a way to do them every day.
7. Everything changes when you stop trying to save and start trying to earn.
My goals to start 2020 all started with "save X every month."
But you can only take expenses so low.
Which has higher ROI? An hour spent budgeting or an hour spent learning copywriting?
If you view money, opportunity, or success as scarce, it will avoid you.
The world, especially the internet-enabled world, is full of opportunity.
Set aside X amount of money that you will invest in these three areas every month.
Your health, time, and energy are assets with high ROI.
Your cash flow will dominate your net worth gains in your early years.
This one deserves a longer post, but the last place to be with your money when you're young is in cash.
The S&P 500 bottomed the day there was a five-block line outside of Trader Joes in NYC.
And people have been calling for a top ever since, but it can and will keep going.
12. Thoughtfully invest in communities to form strong relationships.
Online communities are like a curated resource for like-minded people.
The price of entry is peanuts to the long-term benefits of the relationships you will form.
You can meet anyone in the world online.
But you have to put yourself out there and start sharing your ideas and worldview.
As I shared more online, I begin to meet incredible people. I set a simple goal to meet one new person every week, but most weeks I ended up with more.
Now, these people are some of my best friends.
I can't wait to enjoy dinners with my closest friends again.
Especially with how many smart people I've met this year, those conversations are going to be epic.
@david_perell introduced me to this idea and now I think about it every day.
Find the 10 people that push you forward, make you more creative, work in different domains, and see the world with a unique lens.
Then, double down on them.
17. Writing online is the highest leverage habit in human history.
I can trace everything good that happened to me this year back to writing.
But writing and *publishing online* brought the most amount of good.
I spent months inconsistently sharing into the void.
It was only when I committed to tweeting every day, writing four threads every week, and producing consistently that things accelerated.
I got the chance to meet and interact with many people who were ~a year or two ahead of me.
The most valuable question I asked: what do you wish you knew a year ago?
In the beginning, you need to share way more ideas than you feel comfortable sharing.
Make noise, and listen for signal from both yourself and others.
In the age of capturing attention, the ability to create media assets is more valuable than coding.
My prediction is we will see "content creator" boot camps similar to coding bootcamps in the next few years.
Humans cannot comprehend exponential growth in real-time.
Going from 150 to 300 followers is not +150, it's +100%.
Focus on your doubling time. If it's constant, you're growing exponentially.
If it's accelerating: look out.
The closest thing you get is the turn of a New Year.
That's when I started writing my newsletter, one year ago.
But I wish I started six months before that, before I felt "ready."
24. Become obsessed with finding leverage and efficiency.
The first principles of my productivity are leverage and efficiency.
I want to store my time finite time and energy into infinite assets.
With everything else, I want to be ruthlessly efficient.
Looking back at my goals for 2020 made me laugh.
It's impossible to see one year into the future.
So this year, I'm focusing on 12-week goals and systems.
Much is made about mental models and cognitive biases.
But applying them isn't easy. In looking back at my decisions, the most-common bias is sunk costs bias.
So now I look for it everywhere.
Ask "why" more often with any of your systems, goals, or habits.
Throughout the year I found myself doing things week after week that were inefficient, but never stopped to ask why.
This was the best framework I learned in 2021 (h/t @shaanpuri)
• Know where you are (brutal honesty.)
• Know where you want to be (long-term visioning.)
• Know the next step you need to take (immediate clarity.)
Action, not planning, creates clarity.
I took on a lot this year.
I produced most consistently when I invested in creating systems and designing my environment to reduce friction.
The smoother my systems, the faster I could ship.
This is a reminder to myself.
So I'm reflecting on one question to end 2020: what if I took every goal I'm about to set and 10x'd it? Would that change how I spend my time, energy, and attention?
Every week I share thoughts and links on the growth of people, businesses, and systems.
Join 1,718 others 👇🏽
https://t.co/0z11pkbZp3
2020... what a year.
— Dickie Bush \U0001f4ca (@dickiebush) December 30, 2020
I just put the finishing touches on my Annual Review.
Here are 30 lessons I learned about myself and the world across five areas:
\u2022\xa0Health
\u2022\xa0Wealth
\u2022 Relationships
\u2022\xa0Online creativity
\u2022\xa0Personal operations
\U0001f9f5\U0001f447\U0001f3fc
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(For those who want a crash course in where the future is heading):
To master the creative process, give yourself permission to create junk.
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Here's a thread of his best articles, tweets, and podcast appearances:
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• Write for yourself
• Write to learn more
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But most importantly, writing is leadership at scale.
And it will carry your ideas further than
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1) Give yourself permission to create junk
2) Create on a schedule
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I can't overstate the value of this resource 👇🏼
3/ How to overcome others (and yourself) judging your writing
• The first obstacle: overcoming your own judgment
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Here's a thread of his best articles, tweets, and podcast appearances:
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I’m torn on how to approach the idea of luck. I’m the first to admit that I am one of the luckiest people on the planet. To be born into a prosperous American family in 1960 with smart parents is to start life on third base. The odds against my very existence are astronomical.
I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.
In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.
So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.
Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.
Ironies of Luck https://t.co/5BPWGbAxFi
— Morgan Housel (@morganhousel) March 14, 2018
"Luck is the flip side of risk. They are mirrored cousins, driven by the same thing: You are one person in a 7 billion player game, and the accidental impact of other people\u2019s actions can be more consequential than your own."
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In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.
So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.
Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.
#ஆதித்தியஹ்ருதயம் ஸ்தோத்திரம்
இது சூரிய குலத்தில் உதித்த இராமபிரானுக்கு தமிழ் முனிவர் அகத்தியர் உபதேசித்ததாக வால்மீகி இராமாயணத்தில் வருகிறது. ஆதித்ய ஹ்ருதயத்தைத் தினமும் ஓதினால் பெரும் பயன் பெறலாம் என மகான்களும் ஞானிகளும் காலம் காலமாகக் கூறி வருகின்றனர். ராம-ராவண யுத்தத்தை
தேவர்களுடன் சேர்ந்து பார்க்க வந்திருந்த அகத்தியர், அப்போது போரினால் களைத்து, கவலையுடன் காணப்பட்ட ராமபிரானை அணுகி, மனிதர்களிலேயே சிறந்தவனான ராமா போரில் எந்த மந்திரத்தைப் பாராயணம் செய்தால் எல்லா பகைவர்களையும் வெல்ல முடியுமோ அந்த ரகசிய மந்திரத்தை, வேதத்தில் சொல்லப்பட்டுள்ளதை உனக்கு
நான் உபதேசிக்கிறேன், கேள் என்று கூறி உபதேசித்தார். முதல் இரு சுலோகங்கள் சூழ்நிலையை விவரிக்கின்றன. மூன்றாவது சுலோகம் அகத்தியர் இராமபிரானை விளித்துக் கூறுவதாக அமைந்திருக்கிறது. நான்காவது சுலோகம் முதல் முப்பதாம் சுலோகம் வரை ஆதித்ய ஹ்ருதயம் என்னும் நூல். முப்பத்தி ஒன்றாம் சுலோகம்
இந்தத் துதியால் மகிழ்ந்த சூரியன் இராமனை வாழ்த்துவதைக் கூறுவதாக அமைந்திருக்கிறது.
ஐந்தாவது ஸ்லோகம்:
ஸர்வ மங்கள் மாங்கல்யம் ஸர்வ பாப ப்ரநாசனம்
சிந்தா சோக ப்ரசமனம் ஆயுர் வர்த்தனம் உத்தமம்
பொருள்: இந்த அதித்ய ஹ்ருதயம் என்ற துதி மங்களங்களில் சிறந்தது, பாவங்களையும் கவலைகளையும்
குழப்பங்களையும் நீக்குவது, வாழ்நாளை நீட்டிப்பது, மிகவும் சிறந்தது. இதயத்தில் வசிக்கும் பகவானுடைய அனுக்ரகத்தை அளிப்பதாகும்.
முழு ஸ்லோக லிங்க் பொருளுடன் இங்கே உள்ளது https://t.co/Q3qm1TfPmk
சூரியன் உலக இயக்கத்திற்கு மிக முக்கியமானவர். சூரிய சக்தியால்தான் ஜீவராசிகள், பயிர்கள்
இது சூரிய குலத்தில் உதித்த இராமபிரானுக்கு தமிழ் முனிவர் அகத்தியர் உபதேசித்ததாக வால்மீகி இராமாயணத்தில் வருகிறது. ஆதித்ய ஹ்ருதயத்தைத் தினமும் ஓதினால் பெரும் பயன் பெறலாம் என மகான்களும் ஞானிகளும் காலம் காலமாகக் கூறி வருகின்றனர். ராம-ராவண யுத்தத்தை
தேவர்களுடன் சேர்ந்து பார்க்க வந்திருந்த அகத்தியர், அப்போது போரினால் களைத்து, கவலையுடன் காணப்பட்ட ராமபிரானை அணுகி, மனிதர்களிலேயே சிறந்தவனான ராமா போரில் எந்த மந்திரத்தைப் பாராயணம் செய்தால் எல்லா பகைவர்களையும் வெல்ல முடியுமோ அந்த ரகசிய மந்திரத்தை, வேதத்தில் சொல்லப்பட்டுள்ளதை உனக்கு
நான் உபதேசிக்கிறேன், கேள் என்று கூறி உபதேசித்தார். முதல் இரு சுலோகங்கள் சூழ்நிலையை விவரிக்கின்றன. மூன்றாவது சுலோகம் அகத்தியர் இராமபிரானை விளித்துக் கூறுவதாக அமைந்திருக்கிறது. நான்காவது சுலோகம் முதல் முப்பதாம் சுலோகம் வரை ஆதித்ய ஹ்ருதயம் என்னும் நூல். முப்பத்தி ஒன்றாம் சுலோகம்
இந்தத் துதியால் மகிழ்ந்த சூரியன் இராமனை வாழ்த்துவதைக் கூறுவதாக அமைந்திருக்கிறது.
ஐந்தாவது ஸ்லோகம்:
ஸர்வ மங்கள் மாங்கல்யம் ஸர்வ பாப ப்ரநாசனம்
சிந்தா சோக ப்ரசமனம் ஆயுர் வர்த்தனம் உத்தமம்
பொருள்: இந்த அதித்ய ஹ்ருதயம் என்ற துதி மங்களங்களில் சிறந்தது, பாவங்களையும் கவலைகளையும்
குழப்பங்களையும் நீக்குவது, வாழ்நாளை நீட்டிப்பது, மிகவும் சிறந்தது. இதயத்தில் வசிக்கும் பகவானுடைய அனுக்ரகத்தை அளிப்பதாகும்.
முழு ஸ்லோக லிங்க் பொருளுடன் இங்கே உள்ளது https://t.co/Q3qm1TfPmk
சூரியன் உலக இயக்கத்திற்கு மிக முக்கியமானவர். சூரிய சக்தியால்தான் ஜீவராசிகள், பயிர்கள்